Crossing the Continent
After some time off the bike we were actually looking forward to spending some time in the saddle again. We had a nice tour lined up, a cross-continent ride, so to say.
After a family welcome Churrasco at Anastacio’s house in Florianópolis sadly it was time to say goodbye to our newly-made friends and head on the road towards North Chile.
This was the planned route 3,700 km across the continent of South America.
On the way we stopped at Foz do Iguazu to see the famous Iguazu falls. And, indeed it was fantastic not taking the hundreds of other tourists into account.
Spending one afternoon at the falls was enough, we had the chance to watch a wonderful sunset which we also recorded for our video of this trip.
The next day, early in the morning we made our way towards the Paraguayan Border. Getting there was a bit annoying as people were jumping in front of our bike to stop us, no idea why but, for sure, no friendly reasons.
It was Easter and we were pretty much the only ones heading towards Paraguay and not in the other direction. Still the paperwork took ages and in the end the Paraguayan officer told us that he needed a couple of hours more to get the documents ready…and this was only the Brazilian side of the border. We therefore decided to drive around Paraguay via Argentina.
The Brazilian/Argentinian border was easy and quick and we continued on our way towards Corrientes/ Resistencia where we stayed for the night. We ran into a thunderstorm at night which was scary but good material for our flick.
The next day we continued towards Salta, a 900km stretch with not a lot to see apart from some cows, horses and gauchos. It was raining and dark and the regular stops at the YPF fuelstations with wifi and good coffee were the only highlights of the day. Along coming villages had attractive names as “Pampa del Infierno” and “Rio Muerto”. People along the way were super friendly and took any chance to take photos of us and the bike, them and the bike, their babys and the bike…pretty much any combination you can think of.
Arriving in Salta was nice, the city is really beautiful and we were looking forward to a much-needed rest day before takling the Andes Mountains again. We had a lovely Easter Sunday in Salta, cleaned the bike, did some hiking and visited some sights.
The next morning we continued our trip towards San Salvador de Jujuy and the Paso de Jama. The pass is really beautiful, a good road all the way with few fuel stations. By mistake we did not fill our tank to the top before we left and therefore had to refuel along the way in a little dusty village which cost us a full hour.
The height was quite ok this time again, we drank koka tea which definitely helped cope with the 5000m altitude.
We stayed the night in San Pedro de Atacama, a little Oasis coming out of the desert. There is heaps to do, fountains, the Valle de la Luna and much more but we continued our way towards Iquique. 100km before we arrived we had a bad puncture in the middle of nowhere which we were luckily able to repair and continue slowly to town.
We arrived late at night, found a nice place to stay and were quite exhausted. However we met Jorge, a friend of a friend of a friend who organized new tyres for us and helped us plan the next few days. Thank you Jorge!
Robin’s dad has come to visit us and we will rent a bike for him to do a trip to Bolivia to the Salar de Uyuni together. We are very curious about it!
Please find the video of our continent crossing here:
and our pics here:
